I’ve been part of a writing group for a few years now and, despite being very creative with our writing, we’d struggled coming up with something to call our group.

Our writers group critiquing stories for an upcoming competition

Until now! Yes, we finally committed half an hour to brainstorm some ideas and after considering everything from the ‘Newcastle Writing Collective’ to the ‘Hunter’s Story Gatherers’ we have decided on a name:

The name represents our across-the-Hunter location (not just Newcastle, our members are from Lake Macquarie and the Upper Hunter too), the idea that we don’t write books we tell stories, and that over anything else, we create.

Along with our new name, we have launched a website, where we will re-blog posts from our own websites and let you know about upcoming events and presentations.

Our group has achieved a lot in the last few years – from published short stories, to competition wins and commendations, to live readings and presentations at the Newcastle Writers Festivals in 2014 and 2015. We have another big year coming up, with our presentation at the Newcastle Writers Festival 2016 called ‘Make your writing pop!‘, a writers retreat in the Hunter Valley, and (hopefully) a few more competition successes.

5 responses to “Hunter Story Creators website launched!”

Thanks for sharing this Jessie. We certainly do have a dynamic group. I think you’d agree that besides having a whole lot of fun, we are all very passionate about our writing, supportive of each other and always strive to improve our stories and writing. I’m looking forward to the NWF16!

I agree with everything Maree says here Jessie. I think without the support we give each other and the considered critiques of each others work not to mention the encouragement we give to each other, we would not be as far along with our writing journeys as we are. We are all looking forward to a great presentation by members of our group at the NWF 16.

Great post, Jessie. I personally feel privileged to belong to the Hunter Story Creators. It has developed into a closely-knit group that honours the diversity of writing genre that we bring to it and is invested in each other’s efforts through critiquing, moral support, encouragement, etc. I think our solid cohesiveness stems from the fact that each of our writing journeys has crossed paths with the tutelage of Karen Whitelaw – someone who has been able to perfectly fathom our individual writing aims and needs.

Reblogged this on A Writer's Mental Notes and commented:
I’ve come to realise more and more the importance of belonging to a writers group. Apart from having a laugh, sharing stories and ideas, each of us are able to contribute valuable life/writing skills to help each other develop our stories. During our discussions and critiquing sessions we agonise over words (hence the amount of time it took to name the group), find missing links, make connections, fire off neurons and create stories. We’d like to share some of our tips so if you’re interested come along to our session at the Newcastle Writers Festival to ‘Make your writing pop!’ Hope to see you there.